operational design domain (ODD)

odd squad 

The deposition, which you can read in full below, was taken as part of a lawsuit filed by the family of Wei “Walter” Huang, who died in 2018 when his Model X with Autopilot engaged crashed into a highway barrier.

Mahmood Hikmet, head of research and development at Ohmio Automation, highlighted parts of the transcript where Elluswamy said he doesn’t know about fundamental safety considerations, such as Operational Design Domain, also known as ODD.

The phrase refers to situations, like geography or weather, in which an autonomous vehicle is allowed to operate. For example, if an autonomous vehicle is only capable of driving in a specific city in ideal weather conditions, then a rainy day in a different city would be outside of its ODD.

https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/operational-design-domain

Operational design domain means a description of the specific domain or domains in which an automated driving system is designed to properly operate, including types of roadways, ranges of speed, weather, time of day, and environmental conditions.

While you wouldn’t expect the phrase to come up in everyday conversation or appear in marketing materials, it is definitely something you’d expect the person directing the Autopilot program to know about. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the organization behind the levels of autonomy that Tesla itself has referenced, calls ODD “the key to autonomous vehicle safety,” and Waymo put out an entire study evaluating its software’s performance in a specific domain.

https://www.sae.org/standards/content/j3259/

Per SAE J3016 (2021), the Operational Design Domain (ODD) for a driving automation system is defined as “Operating conditions under which a given driving automation system, or feature thereof, is specifically designed to function, including, but not limited to, environmental, geographical, and time-of-day restrictions, and/or the requisite presence or absence of certain traffic or roadway characteristics.”; in short the ODD defines the limits within which the driving automation system is designed to operate, and as such, will only operate when the parameters described within the ODD are satisfied.. 

source:

        https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/17/23559294/tesla-autopilot-2016-video-pre-mapped-traffic-lights

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Tesla Autopilot Crashes and Causes

Updated September 2021

https://www.autopilotreview.com/tesla-autopilot-accidents-causes/

Because of this, many people advocate to skip “level 3” autonomy, where a driver takes over when the car’s autonomy can’t handle a situation, for “level 4” autonomy, which is equipped to handle situations even when a driver ignores the recommendation to take over.

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https://www.tesladeaths.com/

Q: How many Tesla Autopilot crashes have resulted in death?

Based on cross-verified data from NHTSA investigations and reports (e.g. telemtric data from Tesla compiled in the NHTSA Standing General Order on Crash Reporting ("SGO") portal) as well as expert testimony in court cases pertaining to the specific crashes, the confirmed total of Tesla Autopilot crashes, i.e. incidents where Autopilot was active within 30 seconds of the crash, is currently sixteen (16) crashes leading to nineteen (19) deaths. Of note, there are three incidents each involving one fatality reported in the SGO that we have yet to cross-verify with media coverage.

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